xref: /netbsd-src/external/apache2/mDNSResponder/dist/mDNSShared/dns-sd.1 (revision b1bb3099bf4d47bbe8c7be5b78240a535263771f)
1.\" -*- tab-width: 4 -*-
2.\"
3.\" Copyright (c) 2004 Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
4.\"
5.\" Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
6.\" you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
7.\" You may obtain a copy of the License at
8.\"
9.\"     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
10.\"
11.\" Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
12.\" distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
13.\" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
14.\" See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
15.\" limitations under the License.
16.\"
17.Dd April 2004              \" Date
18.Dt dns-sd 1                \" Document Title
19.Os NetBSD                  \" Operating System
20.\"
21.Sh NAME
22.Nm dns-sd
23.Nd Multicast DNS (mDNS) & DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD) Test Tool \" For whatis
24.\"
25.Sh SYNOPSIS
26.Nm Fl R Ar name type domain port Op Ar key=value ...
27.Pp
28.Nm Fl B Ar      type domain
29.Pp
30.Nm Fl L Ar name type domain
31.\"
32.Sh DESCRIPTION
33The
34.Nm
35command is a network diagnostic tool, much like
36.Xr ping 8
37or
38.Xr traceroute 8 .
39However, unlike those tools, most of its functionality is not implemented in the
40.Nm
41executable itself, but in library code that is available to any application.
42The library API that
43.Nm
44uses is documented in
45.Pa /usr/include/dns_sd.h .
46.Pp
47The
48.Nm
49command is primarily intended for interactive use.
50Because its command-line arguments and output format are subject to change,
51invoking it from a shell script will generally be fragile. Additionally,
52the asynchronous nature of DNS Service Discovery does
53not lend itself easily to script-oriented programming. For example,
54calls like "browse" never complete; the action of performing a "browse"
55sets in motion machinery to notify the client whenever instances of
56that service type appear or disappear from the network. These
57notifications continue to be delivered indefinitely, for minutes,
58hours, or even days, as services come and go, until the client
59explicitly terminates the call. This style of asynchronous interaction
60works best with applications that are either multi-threaded, or use a
61main event-handling loop to receive keystrokes, network data, and other
62asynchronous event notifications as they happen.
63.br
64If you wish to perform DNS Service Discovery operations from a
65scripting language, then the best way to do this is not to execute the
66.Nm
67command and then attempt to decipher the textual output, but instead to
68directly call the DNS-SD APIs using a binding for your chosen language.
69.br
70For example, if you are programming in Ruby, then you can
71directly call DNS-SD APIs using the dnssd package documented at
72.Pa <http://rubyforge.org/projects/dnssd/> .
73.br
74Similar bindings for other languages are also in development.
75.Pp
76.Bl -tag -width R
77.It Nm Fl R Ar name type domain port Op Ar key=value ...
78register (advertise) a service in the specified
79.Ar domain
80with the given
81.Ar name
82and
83.Ar type
84as listening (on the current machine) on
85.Ar port.
86.Pp
87.Ar name
88can be arbitrary unicode text, containing any legal unicode characters
89(including dots, spaces, slashes, colons, etc. without restriction),
90up to 63 UTF-8 bytes long.
91.Ar type
92must be of the form "_app-proto._tcp" or "_app-proto._udp", where
93"app-proto" is an application protocol name registered at
94.Pa http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html .
95.Pp
96.Ar domain
97is the domain in which to register the service.
98In current implementations, only the local multicast domain "local" is
99supported. In the future, registering will be supported in any arbitrary
100domain that has a working DNS Update server [RFC 2136]. The
101.Ar domain
102"." is a synonym for "pick a sensible default" which today
103means "local".
104.Pp
105.Ar port
106is a number from 0 to 65535, and is the TCP or UDP port number upon
107which the service is listening.
108.Pp
109Additional attributes of the service may optionally be described by
110key/value pairs, which are stored in the advertised service's DNS TXT
111record. Allowable keys and values are listed with the service
112registration at
113.Pa http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html .
114.It Nm Fl B Ar type domain
115browse for instances of service
116.Ar type
117in
118.Ar domain .
119.Pp
120For valid
121.Ar type Ns s
122see
123.Pa http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html
124as described above. Omitting the
125.Ar domain
126or using "." means "pick a sensible default."
127.It Nm Fl L Ar name type domain
128look up and display the information necessary to contact and use the
129named service: the hostname of the machine where that service is
130available, the port number on which the service is listening, and (if
131present) TXT record attributes describing properties of the service.
132.Pp
133Note that in a typical application, browsing happens rarely, while lookup
134(or "resolving") happens every time the service is used. For example, a
135user browses the network to pick a default printer fairly rarely, but once
136a default printer has been picked, that named service is resolved to its
137current IP address and port number every time the user presses Cmd-P to
138print.
139.El
140.Sh EXAMPLES
141.Pp
142To advertise the existence of LPR printing service on port 515 on this
143machine, such that it will be discovered by the Mac OS X printing software
144and other DNS-SD compatible printing clients, use:
145.Pp
146.Dl Nm Fl R Ns \ \&"My Test\&" _printer._tcp. \&. 515 pdl=application/postscript
147.Pp
148For this registration to be useful, you need to actually have LPR service
149available on port 515. Advertising a service that does not exist is not
150very useful, and will be confusing and annoying to other people on the
151network.
152.Pp
153Similarly, to advertise a web page being served by an HTTP
154server on port 80 on this machine, such that it will show up in the
155Bonjour list in Safari and other DNS-SD compatible Web clients, use:
156.Pp
157.Dl Nm Fl R Ns \ \&"My Test\&" _http._tcp \&. 80 path=/path-to-page.html
158.Pp
159To find the advertised web pages on the local network (the same list that
160Safari shows), use:
161.Pp
162.Dl Nm Fl B Ns \ _http._tcp
163.Pp
164While that command is running, in another window, try the
165.Nm Fl R
166example given above to advertise a web page, and you should see the
167"Add" event reported to the
168.Nm Fl B
169window. Now press Ctrl-C in the
170.Nm Fl R
171window and you should see the "Remove" event reported to the
172.Nm Fl B
173window.
174.Pp
175.Sh FILES
176.Pa /usr/bin/dns-sd \" Pathname
177.\"
178.Sh SEE ALSO
179.Xr mdnsd 8
180.\"
181.Sh HISTORY
182The
183.Nm
184command first appeared in
185.Nx 6.0 ,
186having originated in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
187